The Tall Hat: A Story of the Man Who Wore His Own Applause (The Wrong Choices Novels, Book 13)

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THE TALL HAT
A Story of the Man Who Wore His Own Applause
The Wrong Choices Novels, Book 13
By 3B-4Life Global

INTRODUCTION

The compound of the twelve teachings has received, across this series, a bag of choices, a marriage, a shop, a schoolbag, a room of stolen evenings, a bottle, a betting slip, a temper, a tongue, a mirror, a hammock, and a string of beads. This book brings a tall hat, and under it a mason of thirty-four named Lum, whose walls were the straightest in three towns and whose ears, by the compound's slow measuring, had not heard a correction in six years, and the compound's finding, laid down at the start: Lum was never defeated by another man. He was defeated by an agreement he made with himself, that the day he stopped learning had been, all along, the day he finished learning.

The compound's ruling on this wrong choice is the series' loudest, because pride is the only wrong choice in the collection that arrives dressed as a reward. Every other wrong choice had to be chosen. Pride is handed to a man by other people, and he has only to accept it. It has eight lessons and one low door.

LESSON ONE - THE FIRST COMPLIMENT

Pride does not arrive as a fault. It arrives as applause.

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Lum built his first wall at nineteen, and it was a good wall, and the town said so, and this is where the compound begins the book, because the compound has no charge against a good wall or a glad town. The charge begins with what the applause did to Lum's ears. A compliment, the compound teaches, is a coin, and a coin is meant to be spent, on more work, better work, harder work. Lum kept his instead. He collected the compliments of the market the way the miser of the old stories collected coins, and the compound's first finding is about the keeping: a kept compliment does not stay a compliment. In the dark of a man's own head, it turns into a verdict, and the verdict reads: this is finished. I am finished. There is nothing above this wall.

The compound's first rule on the tall hat is written for the young, because the young are the ones it wants: the day a man stops hearing correction is never the day he is finished. It is the day he starts finishing, and the compound has taught in every book of this series that a wrong choice is chosen for an afternoon, not for a life. Lum chose one afternoon of standing still in front of a wall that deserved its praise, and the standing became a habit, and the habit became a hat, and the hat, once tall, cannot be taken off by the man himself. Other hands are needed. The compound names the eight lessons of this book as the eight hands.

LESSON TWO - THE RAISED CHIN

The second lesson is about the body, because the compound teaches that pride is not a thought first. It is a posture first.

The market watched Lum's chin rise over the years, one slow inch at a time, and the compound teaches its students to read a man's wrong choices in his neck before they reach his mouth. The raised chin is the body's way of holding the kept compliments in place, and the compound's second finding is about what the chin does to the eyes: a man whose chin is raised looks over the heads of his neighbors, and a man who looks over heads stops seeing heads, and a man who stops seeing heads stops seeing people, and the compound marked the exact season when Lum stopped seeing people, because it was the season his greetings went missing. The whole town noticed before Lum noticed anything, because the compound has taught in every book that the wrong choice is invisible first to its owner.

Here the compound lays its rule on the posture: a man's chin is the cheapest part of him to fix and the last part he thinks to check, and the compound's arithmetic on the inch is patient and merciless. One raised inch costs a man his neighbors. Two costs him his students, because no one learns from a teacher's chin. Three costs him his friends, and four costs him his wife's counsel, and the compound counted Lum at four and a half by the sixth year and marked him, in the ledger the series keeps, as the loneliest man in three towns who was invited everywhere, which is the specific loneliness of the proud, and the compound has a name for it: applauded and alone.

LESSON THREE - THE DEAF EAR

The third lesson is about hearing, and the compound teaches it as a closing, because the deaf ear is the door pride closes.
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An old mason from the far town, who had built the church that still stood, came to see the wall of Lum's that the market praised, and stood before it in silence, and then pointed at the third course of stone and said one word, and the word was the name of a flaw, a small one, honest, and free. The compound's third finding is about the two sounds that word made: in the old mason's mouth, the word was a gift, and in Lum's ear, the word was an attack, and the compound teaches that this is the truest test of a hat's height, that the same sentence lands as a gift in a humble ear and as an attack in a proud one, and that a man can take his own measure in one afternoon by listening to a correction and noticing what his body does with it.

Lum thanked the old mason and rebuilt nothing, and the compound marked the deaf ear as closed, and its third rule is written for the students: every craft in the world is a wall that is never finished, and the man who cannot hear the word at the third course will one day hear the same word from the wall itself, at the collapse, and the wall charges more. Correction, the compound teaches, is the cheapest tuition in the world. The proud man pays the expensive tuition instead, the one where the lesson is taught by the fall, and the fall does not refund.

LESSON FOUR - THE SHRINKING TEACHERS

The fourth lesson is about company, because the compound has taught in every book that a wrong choice chooses its crowd.

In the first year, Lum's table at the palm-wine stall held builders, older men, men who argued about stone. In the third year it held admirers, younger men, men who argued about nothing. In the sixth year, the compound counted the table again and found only mirrors, men who spoke to Lum the way Lum spoke to himself, in compliments, at length, and the compound's fourth finding is about the arithmetic of that table: a man is taught by everyone above him, challenged by everyone beside him, and applauded by everyone below him, and pride does not expel the teachers. It simply rearranges the seating, until no chair at the table holds anyone who could say the word no, and the compound teaches that the proudest table in town always looks the happiest, which is why the young men kept choosing it, and the compound's fourth verdict is written for the young: choose the table where you are the least, because the table where you are the most is the one that is eating you.

The compound also marked, for the record of this series, what the mirrors cost the mirrors themselves, because the young men at Lum's table were not villains either. They were students of applause who had found a teacher, and the compound has seen the arrangement in every generation: the proud man teaches the hungry man to be proud, the hungry man feeds the proud man's hunger, and both of them starve at the happiest table in town.

LESSON FIVE - THE WIDE PROMISE

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The fifth lesson is about the market, because pride eventually sends the mouth further than the hands.

The chief of the third town called for a granary, the largest in the district, stone on stone on stone, and the market turned to Lum, and Lum, standing at four and a half inches of chin, looked at the drawing for one moment and priced it in one breath, and the compound teaches that this was not a decision. It was a reflex. The proud man's mouth is the last part of him that still works at full speed, and it works for the applause, and the compound's fifth finding is about the distance between a promise made by a mouth and a wall built by hands: the distance is measured in seasons, and the hands, in those seasons, are alone, because the admirers who applauded the promise do not lift stone, and the teachers who could have checked the courses were dismissed in the third lesson, and the compound watched Lum build the largest wall of his life with no one beside him and no one above him, which is the exact recipe the compound keeps, in its ledger of falls, under the heading: how a proud man builds.

Here the compound lays its fifth rule, and it is a rule the market still repeats: a humble man overbuilds his promise and underbuilds his mouth. A proud man does the reverse, and the compound asks its students the question it asked the town that season, and the question has no wrong answer except the loud one: when a man's promise grows larger than his patience, which is he selling, the wall or the applause, and the buyer believes he is buying the wall, and the man knows he is selling the applause, and the compound teaches that every fall in this series was purchased, at a good price, by someone who believed the man.

LESSON SIX - THE FALL

The sixth lesson is the one the town tells fastest and the compound tells slowest, because the town tells the wall and the compound tells the man.

The granary stood to its seventh course, and the rains came, and the wall that no one had checked leaned all night, and in the morning it lay across the market road in the exact shape of the word the old mason had spoken three years before, at the third course, for free. The compound's sixth finding is about the hour after the fall, and it is the hour this whole book was written for, because the compound reports what pride does in that hour, and it does it every time, in every generation, in every town: in the hour after the fall, the proud man's first sentence is not about the wall. It is about the blame.

The chief's granary fell, and Lum's first sentence pointed at the sand, the season, the laborers, the rain, and the compound marked the sentence, and then marked the town's face at the sentence, and then marked what the sentence cost, because the compound's arithmetic on blame is the oldest in the collection: blame is a debt paid with another man's name, and the market, which had watched Lum's chin for six years, was ready in that hour to forgive a wall. Walls fall in every town. What the market would not forgive was the sentence, and the compound's sixth verdict is the series' quietest teaching on pride: the fall is an accident the compound can repair, and it repairs them every season, everywhere. The blame is a choice, and a choice, the compound has taught in all thirteen books, is the only thing a man owns completely, and Lum spent his ownership in one sentence, and the town's patience closed like the account of the customer in the book of soon, without warning, in a morning.

LESSON SEVEN - THE BENT HEAD
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The seventh lesson is the series' most hopeful, and the compound teaches it as a second hat.

Because the compound has watched the hour after the fall taken both ways, and it reports that the door out of pride is a low door, and a low door is walked through by a head that is bent, and the compound's seventh finding is about the bending: Lum, three nights after the blame, came back to the market road, and stood where the wall had fallen, and found the old mason there, at the stones, at the third course of them, where the flaw had always been, and the old mason said nothing at all, and Lum, in front of the market that had heard the blame, said one sentence, and the compound marked it as the first bent inch in six years, and the sentence was: "Show me the word again."

The compound's seventh rule is written for the students, not for Lum, and it is the rule the series calls the second hat: pride is not cured by humiliation, which only bends the chin while it plants the grudge. Pride is cured by work, checked work, corrected work, work done beside a man who knows more, in the posture of a student, and the compound teaches that the cure has a taste, and the taste is bitter, and the compound has never once in its ledger seen the cure refused by a man who kept working, and never once seen it kept by a man who stopped, and the seventh verdict is the compound's most practical: a proud man does not need a smaller opinion of himself. He needs a larger opinion of the work, and the work teaches the chin, and the work charges nothing, and it takes three years.

LESSON EIGHT - THE LOW DOOR

The eighth lesson is the compound's last teaching on the tall hat, and it is a teaching about the wall that finally stood, because the compound does not end a book with a mood. It ends with a wall.

The granary was rebuilt, and the compound reports the details that matter: Lum built it with the old mason sitting on a stool at the third course, and the young men from the palm-wine table carried stone for wages and not for applause, and Lum's chin, measured by the compound at the topping-out ceremony, stood at one inch, which the compound calls the human inch, the height a chin rests at when a man is listening, and the compound's eighth finding is about what the town did with the rebuilt wall, and the town did what towns do with a good wall, which is nothing. It stored grain in it. And the compound closed its ledger on the thirteenth wrong choice and taught the series' last word on the tall hat, and the word is for the young men who chose Lum's table and the older ones who left it, and for anyone who has ever stood still in front of a wall that deserved its praise: applause is a weather, and it passes, and the wall is a harvest, and it stays, and the man who builds for the weather builds for a morning, and the man who builds for the granary is still standing when the weather changes, and the compound's eighth rule is its shortest, in all thirteen books, and it is carved above the door of the rebuilt granary, and the door is low, and everyone who enters bends to read it: the wall was never about you.

THE END
The Wrong Choices Novels, Book 13
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